Correlation of Electron Tunneling and Plasmon Propagation in a Luttinger Liquid

Quantum-confined electrons in one dimension behave as a Luttinger liquid. However, unambiguous demonstration of Luttinger liquid phenomena in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) has been challenging. Here we investigate well-defined SWNT cross junctions with a point contact between two Luttinger liquids and combine electrical transport and optical nanoscopy measurements to correlate completely different physical properties (i.e., the electron tunneling and the plasmon propagation) in the same Luttinger liquid system. The suppressed electron tunneling at SWNT junctions exhibits a power-law scaling, which yields a Luttinger liquid interaction parameter that agrees quantitatively with that independently determined from the plasmon velocity based on the near-field optical nanoscopy.